Pearl

I ran inside insideI ran inside x3

A Xuya short story about low-level artificial intelligences. Loosely based on the story of the sand-crab (or of Dã Tràng and the pearl).

 

In Da Trang’s nightmares, Pearl is always leaving—darting away from him, toward the inexorable maw of the sun’s gravity, going into a tighter and tighter orbit until no trace of it remains—he’s always reaching out, sending a ship, a swarm of bots—calling upon the remoras to move, sleek and deadly and yet too agonizingly slow; to do anything, to save what they can.

Too late. Too late.

#

It wasn’t always like this, of course.

In the beginning . . . in the beginning . . . his thoughts fray and scatter away, like cloth held too close to a flame. How long since he’s last slept? The Empress’s courtier was right—but no, no, that’s not it. The Empress doesn’t understand. None of them understand.

Where to Buy

Amazon Us

Buy now

2017 Locus Award Finalist